There Are Skeletons in These Dirts

Jessica Hinds

Word Count 1194

I fell for Christina because I felt how Christina fell for me, and I like how that feels. I have never been motivated by romance. While my sisters were playing house, I played school. I never dreamed about a wedding, I fantasized about book signings and Broadway standing ovations. I failed to swoon over boybands, opting for the distorted melodies of Billy Corgan and Marylin Manson. I choose my first boyfriend, a barbershop quartet singing, civil war reenacting 16-year-old, because he had a reliable car and was nerdy enough that his devotion and chauffeuring would be guaranteed. I had thought perhaps this was due to my queerness, but even after I switched to dating women, I experienced dating as the intersection of a social buddy, a sex partner, and that person who will help you move. It’s practical in our society to couple up. After rattling off what I was looking for in a partner, a friend informed me that I did not in fact want a girlfriend or wife I wanted a personal assistant, a maid, and a prostitute. 

Nevertheless, I go on the apps; it is a thing to do. 2019 was shaping up to be a fantastic year. My business was taking off, my body and mind were healthy, and I was 18 months free from unhealthy people in my life; no more homophobic friends or fraudulent business partners. It was Christina’s style that first caught my eye. A dangerous first attraction for gays because it takes a minute to discover if you want to fuck them or steal their wardrobe. She was short and intensely shy. I am tall and annoyingly loud. But I could tell she was intensely attracted to me, so we fell into coupledom fast. Three-night sleepovers, meeting of friends, staycations in overpriced Times Square hotels. 

After two months, she told me she loved me. I didn’t want to lie, so I got naked. It was refreshing to know this tactic works on all genders. 

…

I blame Jurassic Park. What tomboy could resist? It was the early 1990s, and we had a sizable backyard, especially with the garden and the sandbox between the back porch and the wooden dock. There are skeletons in these dirts. I was going to find the bones. I was looking for the dead. Searching for the dead is not a disturbing activity. People do it all the time, digging in their head, on the messages on their lover's phone. If you are not searching for corpses, you are hunting ghosts. I liked to work with my hands. There is a visceral satisfaction in the act of unearthing. There is a comfort in the compression of earth densified into the soft skin beneath your fingernails. Dino bones were hard to find, but I knew if I kept digging, I would find the dead. There are carcasses in these dirts. 

My sisters began to notice the amputation of various Barbie limbs. I attempted to curb their rage with stories of heroic veterans, but women weren't allowed in direct combat. Amputee Barbie would never make it past branding. Perhaps the planting of impossibly perfect limbs might lure the hungry bones of the deceased closer to the surface. I only took what I needed. Never all from one source. Like mom taught us about harvesting the vegetables. Plastic permi-arched feet grow back like ripe red tomatoes, yes? There are bodies in these dirts. My punishment was being locked in the rabbit hutch. A few hours pretzeled in a hutch by your older sister will urge you to find a different bait. 

When I returned sans limbs I did find a needle. Not one of my mom’s sewing needles, or grandma’s knitting needles. I found a needle-like the ones that Cyclopes hands out by the San Joaquin River. He’s always behind the pool hall in his leather jacket and black jeans, surrounded by teenagers. It will be a few more years before I understand why my sisters call it Methel Island. Every kind of needle has the magical power to transform; be it cloth, yarn, or blood. There is death in these dirts. But I hadn’t found anyone yet. 

I began to feel lost. The world makes too many promises. I did not ask to become hopeful. But the TV told me if I dig I will find bones. This felt like Santa Clause all over again. I was starting to gather a collection of headshots on my prefrontal bulletin board; Tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, Father, Kris Kringle, God. Perhaps the dinosaurs were another lie to convince us children to sit still when our bodies yearned for exploration, sensation, and sound. No one had ever taught me how to ask for help. It was not a practice of my people. I earned love, rather earned the absence of rage, by not having needs. But if I don’t tell mother. Perhaps. So I wrote to the one person who would know more than anyone else I knew. 

Jimmy had been dead for years. Surely he would know where to find other dead things. So I wrote to him and buried the letter in the backyard. There are missives in these dirts. When he did not answer, I realized I was probably asking too much without compensation. As a missionary in heaven (that's what happens when babies die), he must be busy. So I took my life savings; I was a good saver.  I took the bus to the mall, not the nice mall, the other one.  At the Claire’s kiosk, I purchased one of those broken heart necklaces. Two hearts that, when placed together, complete a single heart. I bury one half in the backyard. I considered saving it for when I grew up and fell in love, but this seemed more important. After all, you have to choose between love and a career if you are a girl, and I had big plans once I finished high school. 

So I buried half my heart in the backyard between the cactus and the willow tree in an attempt to hire my dead brother to show me where the dinosaurs are buried. There is love in these dirts. 

…

Eventually, it became clear that Christina and I were not going to make it through the pandemic. I had quit smoking and drinking, so we now had nothing in common except four cats and the knowledge that stereotypes are not wrong, just incomplete. Mid-day, mid-rain on July 15th, I met Christina under the overhang of a retail space that failed to retain a renter for more than three months. During the last year, it had been a family-style Italian restaurant, a French bistro, a dumpling house, and now a southern chicken spot. It seemed that no matter what cuisine tried, One Greene Ave was never going to be a restaurant. Perhaps some spaces were meant to stay empty. 

The rain thundered down on the awning, applauding the inevitable. Christina asked if we could still remain friends. I told her I had no desire to know her.  She accused me of being cold-hearted. I shrugged, “No, no... it’s warm underground.”

Jessica is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter writing and teaching in the West Village with Frida Catlo and Amelia MewHeart. As the founder of Meditative Writing, she is honored to work with award-winning showrunners, writers, producers, and recovering journalists to help TV, film, theatre, and prose writers suffer less and write more unique stories. She has an MFA in Writing from the New School for Drama and has studied creative nonfiction at City College of New York and Yale. For more information, please visit MeditativeWriting.org.